In the latest news, Tiga, the trade association which represents U.K. video game developers, has filed a complaint with Britain's Advertising Standards Authority, reports develop.

At issue are print ads placed by the British government's Change4Life campaign which show a young boy holding a game controller. The ad's text reads, "Risk an early death, just do nothing."

Of the ads, Tiga CEO Richard Wilson said:

This advert is absurd and insulting in equal measure. To imply that playing a video game leads to a premature rendezvous with the Grim Reaper is a non-sequitur of colossal proportions. Alcohol and drug abuse, smoking, obesity and involvement in violent crime are forms of behaviour that risk an early death...

This advert is offensive to the 30,000 people who work in the UK’s video games industry, particularly the 10,000 who work in games development. Game developers are typically intelligent, very qualified and creative individuals who work to produce high quality games for people’s entertainment. They are not in the business of driving people to an early grave...

Comments

I live in Australia, and have recently started hearing radio ads while at work along the lines of "don't let your children sit down for more than an hour a day, get them outdoors doing healthy sporty things, because all children should be doing that not staying inside!"

And yeah.. I know, we all know, that excercise is needed by kids.. and they are getting less and less.

But such overreactionary BS needs to be checked.. I cannot abide how people are allowed to use such "headlines" to catch people's attention. They should not be allowed to do so, they should have to present the facts, and only the facts, without any moderation or opinion involved. They should not be allowed to use images and phrases picked for maximum psychological impact for their own agenda.

If the UK government is willing to step in to moderate video game content, and other such things.. and it is, which I for one am fine with.. then it must also be willing to step in to moderate things like this.

It is high time advertising and news outlets in general were forced to follow the same rules everyone else is.

"We never paid any heed to the ancient prophecies... Like fools we clung to the old hatreds, and fought as we had for generations"

"We never paid any heed to the ancient prophecies... Like fools we clung to the old hatreds, and fought as we had for generations"

7.1 No marketing communication should mislead, or be likely to mislead, by inaccuracy, ambiguity, exaggeration, omission or otherwise.

7.2 Marketing communications must not omit, hide or provide in an unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner material information if that omission or presentation is likely to affect consumers’ decisions about whether and how to buy the advertised product, unless the information is obvious from the context. If the advertisement is limited by time or space, the ASA will take into account steps that the advertiser has taken to make that information available to consumers by other means.

b) the identity (eg trading name) and geographical address of the marketer and any other trader on whose behalf the advertiser is acting

c) the price of the advertised product, including taxes; or where the nature of the product is such that the price cannot be calculated in advance, the manner in which the price is calculated

d) delivery charges

e) the arrangement for payment, delivery, performance or complaint handling, if those differ from the arrangements that consumers are likely to reasonably expect

f) that consumers have the right to withdraw or cancel, if they have that right (see 42.2(f)).

Here they could be in violation of 7.1 by misleading through both inaccuracy and ambiguity. The ycould also be inviolation of 7.2 by not showing that other sedintary activities such as television or reading have the same affect as gaming if not taken in moderation.

The main problem is that you can't read the block of text to the left of the image. That is the key.

Things become conjecture until I can see the text. I bet all the material in the text checks out and is entirely accurate. I bet the only complaint the industry really has is that the image next to the text has a kid playing a videogame, rather than any other form of sedentary 'activity'.

Having some experience of previous ASA rulings you generally have to actively mislead for the ad to be pulled. The presumption is towards the freedom of expression. Here the argument may be that the image is simply illustrative of the text, not the message itself.

BTW there is another ad in the campaign with a kid eating cake; another illustration of a activity not dangerous per se, but in excess ...

The argument "I'm offended" seems to be all the rage now, it seems that everyone has the right to be offended and that the offensive material be taken down, it's a lame argument.

As has been said it takes a lot for someone to fall foul of the ASA, and as this is a government campaign it may even be exempt from the rules.

It amazes me how suddenly people seem to have forgotten about the stereotype of lazy people sitting playing games and getting fat. South Park famously showed this. The advert has been taken out of context as it is part of a much larger campaign (I haven't seen the cake industry moan about the advert with a boy and a cake). The advert is simply an example of the inactivity that happens across the land, from what I see it doesn't say "Playing games = Death". The whole commotion over this advert is akin to a campaign from the Daily Mail (something people here actively criticise for being over-reactionary). Games don't directly lead to early death, but the lazy lifestyle (as in sitting playing games all day, eating fatty foods all at the expense of exercise) does and this is what the advert says.

The wise words of Michael Winner: "Calm down dear, it's only a commercial".

"I haven't seen the cake industry moan about the advert with a boy and a cake"

Perhaps because eating cake DOES cause obesity, DOES lead to health problems?

No amount of gameplay is going to cause death, and the association put forth by that image is absolutely suggesting that gameplay --> death. It's making a number of stereotypical yet far from common assumptions regarding people who enjoy video games and physical health.

"Games don't directly lead to early death, but the lazy lifestyle (as in sitting playing games all day, eating fatty foods all at the expense of exercise) does and this is what the advert says."

No, it doesn't. It simply has a picture of a kid with a controller and a glazed expression. It does not show a cheeseburger in a McDonald's wrapper, it does not show other kids outside playing sports and exercising. There is NO context; it's just a kid with a controller and the words "RISK AN EARLY DEATH: DO NOTHING".

The fine print is just that, fine print. It's intentionally tiny and incomprehensible next to the eye catch. If that were on a billboard, do you think ANYONE would catch the fine print? Most probably wouldn't even realize it's there.

The context is is that it is part of a wider campaign (again an advert exists for cake), and actually reading the "small print" it doesn't even mention games, it says look at your perfectly healthy child doing what children do, playing games and goes on to talk about their diet. Nowhere does it mention games, nowhere does it link gaming with death, it appears that everyone jumped to a conclusion (the wrong one), and in fact it actually reinforced the view that gaming is a popular pasttime (albeit a child's hobby).

I have finally read the ad in full thanks to Kotaku and I still find it offensive. It is a get kids to be active for at least an hour a day ad. But with the picture they chose it inadvertantly puts across the image that kids cannot be active while still having access to games.

Is 'freedom of expression' only OK when it expresses a point of view in support of the industry: is this not simply 'Ban This Sick [Advertising] Filth'?

I don't find it to be a case of "Ban this filth" I find it to be a bit more of a libel complaint. Just by the association of gaming to and early death, they are making out gaming to be completely bad with no redeaming qualities. Just the headline and picture alone does not advocate a healthy life style and gaming in moderation. It just simply comes across as games will kill you.

I'll have to take a closer look at the CAP code you linked to, but it should be interesting.

While I wouldn't call it offensive, I would call it uncalled for and stereotypical. It's a misrepresentation of the gaming populace as fat and lazy and it makes it a point to showcase gaming in particular instead of just showing the kid sitting there doing exactly what the ad says - nothing. Not playing a game, not watching TV, just sitting there.

While some people do fit into the stereotype of the lazy gamer, myself included until last year, it's just as wrong to make a connection solely between games and major health concerns as it is to do it with games and overly violent behavior.

That just becomes a matter of opinion though, which is why I said that I didn't find it very offensive. Then again, I suppose you could say I have a bit of a double standard about it because if they were to say that gaming would make me a violent psychopath I would be offended, but saying that it leads to health problems like they are doesn't offend me near as much.

Although that could also be because there's some truth to the point about causing health problems and the reason I found it rude was because they singled out gaming when they said "do nothing" instead of leaving it ambiguous.

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Andrew Eisen: In other words, a hero is male because that's the default. A hero is female because of a gender-related reason.03/31/2015 - 5:32pm

Andrew Eisen: Her point is that "When archetypal fantasy heroes in games are overwhelmingly portrayed as men, it reinforces the idea that... women should be able to empathize with male characters but that men needn’t be able to identify with women’s stories."03/31/2015 - 5:30pm

Andrew Eisen: Daniel - She doesn't say that in any of the TvW videos and I doubt she's said elsewhere that all games with male protagonists are male power fantasies. Anyway, you seem to be conflating two different ideas.03/31/2015 - 5:30pm

Wymorence: For me it just boils down to the fact that, even at a giant company, when a game comes out annually it just gives it a vibe of being rushed out the door. And god knows Unity sucked some major lemur with all its bugs...03/31/2015 - 4:22pm

PHX Corp: I launched my spotify account today, and I kinda went a little overboard with adding music03/31/2015 - 3:59pm

Sora-Chan: Con't. Games like AC are a pain to someone like me who likes to play games in order. So when a game gets too many releases too quickly, it puts me off. Only exceptions are games that have no interconnected underlying stories like the FF games.03/31/2015 - 2:53pm

Sora-Chan: Wikipedia has rarely let me down on matters like this. But yeah... AC needs a break.. like two.. or three... or eight years.03/31/2015 - 2:51pm

Conster: There's 9 already?! I think I played 1, 2, and the ones inbetween 2 and 3.03/31/2015 - 2:23pm

Sora-Chan: Con't There are now Nine... of just the main entries into the series. There are 13 more in the "other games" department.03/31/2015 - 2:15pm

Sora-Chan: I tried to get into AC. Was having a decent time with the first one, at which point they had already released three titles. Then a fourth came out... then a fifth... the wall kept growing before I could finish the first.03/31/2015 - 2:14pm

Daniel Lewis: I think ubisoft should give AC a break before it's milked to death,and i'm a big fan of the games03/31/2015 - 1:15pm

Daniel Lewis: The only thing said i disagree with is the final quote on Men's experiences are seen to be universal but women are gendered,though doesn't anita say that games with male protagonists are male power fantasies,so in turn both are gendered03/31/2015 - 1:08pm

Daniel Lewis: i found the video to be much better than any of the TvW series and it's about time the positive women are put in the spotlight03/31/2015 - 1:06pm

Daniel Lewis: So feministfrequency released a positive female character video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXmj2yJNUmQ03/31/2015 - 1:05pm

Daniel Lewis: I think the guy who made the direct leak said it was an april fools joke when a real one was announced03/31/2015 - 12:43pm

MaskedPixelante: No way Nintendo would let information like that get out. Remember, they shut down a memoir about the localization of Earthbound by enforcing a 20 year old NDA on the author.03/31/2015 - 12:42pm